Gender & Social Equity

Helvetas promotes action or policy favoring disadvantaged social groups and women who tend to suffer most from discrimination. We strive to address unequal power relations and diminish bias and violence.

Development tends to benefit only certain segments of the population. This can inadvertently consolidate or even exacerbate existing inequalities. Helvetas makes sure that our work actively and meaningfully includes and supports the most disadvantaged groups, in particular also women.

Why gender and social equity matter

Poverty can happen to anyone, but certain groups face a higher risk. The most vulnerable include ethnic and religious minorities, people born into low social status such as caste, women and girls, people with impaired health, citizens of isolated geographic areas, people facing stigmatization, the young, and the old.

Being economically poor tends to be strongly correlated with being socially disadvantaged – that is, experiencing social discrimination and powerlessness.

«As a programmer, I know anything is possible.»

Medina Banjić, who trained in computer programming in 2016 as part of a Helvetas project in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Our work

Helvetas not only promotes broadly beneficial development, but also seeks to work specifically towards a more meaningful interaction between disadvantaged groups such as women and decision-makers and service providers.

Internally, we strive towards a gender balanced, strongly socially aware workforce, and are committed to a minimum 30% gender representation at different management levels.

Our Expertise

We seek to partner with organizations that share our broad organizational values. Our Gender & Social Equity Team provides advisory services both to Helvetas and external clients.